Racial wounds, in black and white

By CHRISTOPHER O'DONNELL

Friday

Apr 30, 2010 at 12:01 AMApr 30, 2010 at 12:54 AM

The faded 1970 yearbooks show them together, page after page of photos of black and white students side by side. But for 40 years, black and white alumni of the Sarasota High School Class of 1970 has been divided by resentment and mistrust born from being thrown together when Sarasota desegregated its schools in 1967.

Reunions of the class of '70 have been largely segregated ever since. Black alumni, who said they never felt welcome at official reunions, held their own events.

Now, as the 40th anniversary of their graduation approaches this weekend, alumni are using the event to reach across the racial divide. The former classmates, now almost 60 years old, say it is time for the class to come together.

A key part of the reconciliation is recognition by some white alumni that they did not do enough to welcome the black students who were bused to Sarasota High.

In a letter to a black alumnus now posted on a reunion website, class president Mike Hartenstine formally apologized.

"As class president, I could have taken the lead in welcoming all Booker students and encouraging my other classmates to be sympathetic," he wrote.

"I am ashamed to admit I was indifferent to the turmoil you confronted and the injustice you felt."

Yet not all agree. Some white alumni see nothing to apologize for. A few even asked that pages about reconciliation be removed from the website.

And some black alumni do not want to revisit a time when their community high school was closed and they were forced to attend a predominantly white and sometimes hostile school.

But alumni who are trying to bridge the gap say the process is helping to heal long-buried feelings of anger and guilt.

Gerald Law's high school memories include daily verbal abuse from a small group of white students who would wait for his school bus to arrive so they could shout the N-word at him and other black students.

The experience hurt him so much he resolved never to have anything to do with the school.

Reading Hartenstine's apology brought tears to his eyes. Four decades after he walked out of Sarasota High for the last time, he will attend his first official class reunion this weekend.

"I feel a little guilty I have let all these years go by and not taken the opportunity of making friends with these guys," he said. "The bad feelings I harbored years ago are now gone."

Desegregation

Almost all black students in Sarasota attended Booker High School in Newtown until it closed in 1967.

When desegregation happened, about 150 black sophomores, juniors and seniors were bused to Sarasota High. At the time, ninth-graders attended junior high schools.

Many of the bused students were angry their neighborhood school had been closed. Vastly outnumbered by white students at their new school, they gave up on dreams of being class president or homecoming queen.

White students saw no need to welcome the strangers who seemed to resent them and their school, graduates say.

School administrators gave little help to students to cope with the upheaval. Inevitably, students largely stuck with their own kind.

"One of my black classmates said she felt she was invisible," said Hartenstine. "It's not that white students went out of their way to make life miserable for black students; it was a reluctance to engage with them."

Pee-Wee's role

The impetus to unite the class came from an unlikely source: Pee-Wee Herman.

Actor Paul Reubens, known mainly for his comedy character Pee-Wee Herman, moved to Sarasota about 1960 and attended Sarasota High.

He said the stress of desegregation was thrust upon children already struggling with normal problems of adolescence.

"I'm sure there were malicious people and people whose hearts were filled with hate, but for the most part we were just 15-year-olds dealing with years of conditioning and we had no help from anyone," said Reubens, who now lives in California. "It was an experiment that ended poorly for us."

It was Reubens who suggested to reunion organizers that they involve more black alumni this year and that an apology was needed.

The idea led to the formation of a group, The Booker Experience, focused on bringing alumni together.

The group includes local funeral director Robert Toale, who, when in high school, would drive black student athletes back to Newtown every day after practice since their bus did not wait.

Another member is City Commissioner Fredd Atkins, who said that for years after high school he did not even want to have white friends.

"It took me 40 years to try and meet them halfway," he said. "I needed to go through this."

Members of the group said they will continue to build relations between black and white alumni long after this weekend's reunion is over.

"Healing can take a long time," said member Liz Beahm. "We've lost 40 years of friendship. It would be nice to have that now."

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